To cheer life’s flowery April fast decays;
Yet in the hoary winter of my days,
For ever green shall be my trust in Heaven.
Celestial King! O, let thy presence pass
Before my spirit, and an image fair
Shall meet that look of mercy from on high,
As the reflected image in a glass
Doth meet the look of him who seeks it there,
And owes its being to the gazer’s eye.
The prevailing characteristics of Spanish devotional poetry are warmth of imagination, and depth and sincerity of feeling. The conception is always striking and original, and, when not degraded by dogmas, and the poor, puerile conceits arising from them, beautiful and sublime. This results from the frame and temperament of the mind, and is a general characteristic of the Spanish poets, not only in this department of song, but in all others. The very ardor of imagination which, exercised upon minor themes, leads them into extravagance and hyperbole, when left to act in a higher and wider sphere conducts them nearer and nearer to perfection. When imagination spreads its wings in the bright regions of devotional song, — in the pure empyrean, — judgment should direct its course, but there is no danger of its soaring too high. The heavenly land still lies beyond its utmost flight. There are heights it cannot reach; there are fields of air which tire its wing; there is a splendor which dazzles its vision; — for there is a glory “which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.”
But perhaps the greatest charm of the devotional poets of Spain is their sincerity. Most of them were ecclesiastics, — men who had in sober truth renounced the realities of this life for the hopes and promises of another. We are not to suppose that all who take holy orders are saints; but we should be still farther from believing that all are hypocrites. It would be even more absurd to suppose that none are sincere in their professions than that all are. Besides, with whatever feelings a man may enter the monastic life, there is something in its discipline and privations which has a tendency to wean the mind from earth, and to fix it upon heaven. Doubtless many have seemingly renounced the world from motives of worldly aggrandizement; and others have renounced it because it has renounced them. The former have carried with them to the cloister their earthly ambition, and the latter their dark misanthropy; and though many have daily kissed the cross and yet grown hoary in iniquity, and shrived their souls that they might sin more gayly on, — yet solitude works miracles in the heart, and many who enter the cloister from worldly motives find it a school wherein the soul may be trained to more holy purposes and desires. There is not half the corruption and hypocrisy within the convent’s walls that the church bears the shame of hiding there. Hermits may be holy men, though knaves have sometimes been hermits. Were they all hypocrites, who of old for their souls’ sake exposed their naked bodies to the burning sun of Syria? Were they, who wandered houseless in the solitudes of Engaddi? Were they, who dwelt beneath the palm-trees by the Red Sea? O, no! They were ignorant, they were deluded, they were fanatic, but they were not hypocrites; if there be any sincerity in human professions and human actions, they were not hypocrites. During the Middle Ages, there was corruption in the church, — foul, shameful corruption; and now also hypocrisy may scourge itself in feigned repentance, and ambition hide its face beneath a hood; yet all is not therefore rottenness that wears a cowl. Many a pure spirit, through heavenly-mindedness and an ardent though mistaken zeal, has fled from the temptations of the world to seek in solitude and self-communion a closer walk with God. And not in vain. They have found the peace they sought. They have felt, indeed, what many profess to feel, but do not feel, — that they are strangers and sojourners here, travellers who are bound for their home in a far country. It is this feeling which I speak of as giving a peculiar charm to the devotional poetry of Spain. Compare its spirit with the spirit which its authors have exhibited in their lives. They speak of having given up the world, and it is no poetical hyperbole; they speak of longing to be free from the weakness of the flesh, that they may commence their conversation in heaven, — and we feel that they had already begun it in lives of penitence, meditation, and prayer.
THE PILGRIM’S BREVIARY.
If thou vouchsafe to read this treatise, it shall seem no otherwise to thee than the way to an ordinary traveller, — sometimes fair, sometimes foul; here champaign, there enclosed; barren in one place, better soyle in another; by woods, groves, hills, dales, plains, I shall lead thee.
BURTON’S ANATOMIE OF MELANCHOLY.
THE glittering spires and cupolas of Madrid have sunk behind me. Again and again I have turned to take a parting look, till at length the last trace of the city has disappeared, and I gaze only upon the sky above it.
And now the sultry day is passed; the freshening twilight falls, and the moon and the evening star are in the sky. This river is the Xarama. This noble avenue of trees leads to Aranjuez. Already its lamps begin to twinkle in the distance. The hoofs of our weary mules clatter upon the wooden bridge; the public square opens before us; yonder, in the moonlight, gleam the 18 walls of the royal palace, and near it, with a rushing sound, fall the waters of the Tagus.
WE have now entered the vast and melancholy plains of La Mancha, — a land to which the genius of Cervantes has given a vulgo-classic fame. Here are the windmills, as of old; every village has its Master Nicholas, — every venta its Maritornes. Wondrous strong are the spells of fiction! A few years pass away, and history becomes romance, and romance, history. To the peasantry of Spain, Don Quixote and his squire are historic personages; and woe betide the luckless wight who unwarily takes the name of Dulcinea upon his lips within a league of El Toboso! The traveller, too, yields himself to the delusion; and as he traverses the arid plains of La Mancha, pauses with willing credulity to trace the footsteps of the mad Hidalgo, with his “velvet breeches on a holy day, and slippers of the same.” The high-road from Aranjuez to Cordova crosses and recrosses the knight-errant’s path. Between Manzanares and Valdepenas stands the inn where he was dubbed a knight; to the northward, the spot where he encountered the windmills; to the westward, the inn where he made the balsam of Fierabras, the scenes of his adventures with the fulling-mills, and his tournament with the barber; and to the southward, the Sierra Morena, where he did penance, like the knights of olden time.
For my own part, I confess that there are seasons when I am willing to be the dupe of my imagination; and if this harmless folly but lends its wings to a dull-paced hour, I am even ready to believe a fairy tale.
ON the fourth day of our journey we dined at Manzanares, in an old and sombre-looking inn, which, I think, some centuries back, must have been the dwelling of a grandee. A wide gateway admitted us into the inn-yard, which was a paved court, in the centre of the edifice, surrounded by a colonnade, and open to the sky above. Beneath this colonnade we were shaved by the village barber, a supple, smooth-faced Figaro, with a brazen laver and a gray montera cap. There, too, we dined in the open air, with bread as white as snow, and the rich red wine of Valdepenas; and there, in the listlessness of after-dinner, smoked the sleep-inviting cigar, while in the court-yard before us the muleteers danced a fandango with the maids of the inn, to such music as three blind musicians could draw from a violin, a guitar, and a clarinet. When this scene was over, and the blind men had groped their way out of the yard, I fell into a delicious slumber, from which I was soon awakened by music of another kind. It was a clear, youthful voice, singing a national song to the sound of a guitar. I opened my eyes, and near me stood a tall, graceful figure, leaning against one of the pillars of the colonnade, in the attitude of a serenader. His dress was that of a Spanish student. He wore a black gown and cassock, a pair of shoes made of an ex-pair of boots, and a hat in the shape of a half-moon, with the handle of a wooden spoon sticking out on one side like a cockade. When he had finished his song, we invited him to the remnant of a Vich sausage, a bottle of Valdepenas, bread at his own discreti
on, and a pure Havana cigar. The stranger made a leg, and accepted these signs of good company with the easy air of a man who is accustomed to earn his livelihood by hook or by crook; and as the wine was of that stark and generous kind which readily “ascends one into the brain,” our gentleman with the half-moon hat grew garrulous and full of anecdote, and soon told us his own story, beginning with his birth and parentage, like the people in Gil Bias.
“I am the son of a barber,” quoth he; “and first saw the light some twenty years ago, in the great city of Madrid. At a very early age, I was taught to do something for myself, and began my career of gain by carrying a slow-match in the Prado, for the gentlemen to light their cigars with, and catching the wax that dropped from the friars’ tapers at funerals and other religious processions.
“At school I was noisy and unruly; and was finally expelled for hooking the master’s son with a pair of ox-horns, which I had tied to my head, in order to personate the bull in a mock bullfight. Soon after this my father died, and I went to live with my maternal uncle, a curate in Fuencarral. He was a man of learning, and resolved that I should be like him. He set his heart upon making a physician of me; and to this end taught me Latin and Greek.
“In due time I was sent to the University #
of Alcalâ. Here a new world opened before me. What novelty, — what variety, — what excitement! But, alas! three months were hardly gone, when news came that my worthy uncle had passed to a better world. I was now left to shift for myself. I was penniless, and lived as I could, not as I would. I became a sopista, a soup-eater, — a knight of the wooden spoon. I see you do not understand me. In other words, then, I became one of that respectable body of charity scholars who go armed with their wooden spoons to eat the allowance of eleemosynary soup which is daily served out to them at the gate of the convents. I had no longer house nor home. But necessity is the mother of invention. I became a hanger-on of those who were more fortunate than myself; studied in other people’s books, slept in other people’s beds, and breakfasted at other people’s expense. This course of life has been demoralizing, but it has quickened my wits to a wonderful degree.
“Did you ever read the life of the Gran Tacano, by Quevedo? In the first book you have a faithful picture of life in a Spanish university. What was true in his day is true in ours. O
Alcalâ! Alcalâ! if your walls had tongues as well as ears, what tales could they repeat! what midnight frolics! what madcap revelries! what scenes of merriment and mischief! How merry is a student’s life, and yet how changeable! Alternate feasting and fasting, — alternate Lent and Carnival, — alternate want and extravagance! Care given to the winds, — no thought beyond the passing hour; yesterday, forgotten, — to-morrow, a word in an unknown tongue!
“Did you ever hear of raising the dead? not literally, — but such as the student raised, when he dug for the soul of the licentiate Pedro Gardas, at the fountain between Penafiel and Salamanca, money? No? Well, it is done after this wise. Gambling, you know, is our great national vice; and then gamblers are so dishonest! Now, our game is to cheat the cheater. We go at night to some noted gaming-house, —— five or six of us in a body. We stand around the table, watch those that are at play, and occasionally put in a trifle ourselves to avoid suspicion. At length the favorable moment arrives. Some eager player ventures a large stake. I stand behind his chair. He wins. As quick as thought, I stretch my arm over his shoulder and seize the glittering prize, saying very coolly, ‘I have won at last.’ My gentleman turns round in a passion, and I meet his indignant glance with a look of surprise. He storms, and I expostulate; he menaces, — I heed his menaces no more than the buzzing of a fly that has burnt his wings in my lamp. He calls the whole table to witness; but the whole table is busy, each with his own gain or loss, and there stand my comrades, all loudly asserting that the stake was mine. What can he do? there was a mistake; he swallows the affront as best he may, and we bear away the booty. This we call raising the dead. You say it is disgraceful, — dishonest. Our maxim is, that all is fair among sharpers: Baylar al son que se toca, — Dance to any tune that is fiddled. Besides, as I said before, poverty is demoralizing. One loses the nice distinctions of right and wrong, of meum and tuum.
“Thus merrily pass the hours of term-time. When the summer vacations come round, I sling my guitar over my shoulder, and with a light heart, and a lighter pocket, scour the country, like a strolling piper or a mendicant friar. Like the industrious ant, in summer I provide for winter; for in vacation we have time for reflection, and make the great discovery, that there is a portion of time called the future. I pick up a trifle here and a trifle there, in all the towns and villages through which I pass, and before the end of my tour I find myself quite rich — for the son of a barber. This we call the vida tunantesca, — a rag-tag-and-bobtail sort of life. And yet the vocation is as honest as that of a begging Franciscan. Why not?
“And now, gentlemen, having dined at your expense, with your leave I will put this loaf of bread and the remains of this excellent Vich sausage into my pocket, and, thanking you for your kind hospitality, bid you a good afternoon. God be with you, gentlemen!”
IN general, the aspect of La Mancha is desolate and sad. Around you lies a parched and sunburnt plain, which, like the ocean, has no limits but the sky; and straight before you, for many a weary league, runs the dusty and level road, without the shade of a single tree. The villages you pass through are poverty-stricken and half-depopulated; and the squalid inhabitants wear a look of misery that makes the heart ache. Every league or two, the ruins of a post-house, or a roofless cottage with shattered windows and blackened walls, tells a sad tale of the last war. It was there that a little band of peasantry made a desperate stand against the French, and perished by the bullet, the sword, or the bayonet. The lapse of many years has not changed the scene, nor repaired the battered wall; and at almost every step the traveller may pause and exclaim: —
“Here was the camp, the watch-flame, and the host;
Here the bold peasant stormed the dragon’s nest.”
From Valdepenas southward the country wears a more lively and picturesque aspect. The landscape breaks into hill and valley, covered with vineyards and olive-fields; and before you rise the dark ridges of the Sierra Morena, lifting their sullen fronts into a heaven all gladness and sunshine. Ere long you enter the wild mountain-pass of Despena-Perros. A sudden turn in the road brings you to a stone column, surmounted by an iron cross, marking the boundary line between La Mancha and Andalusia. Upon one side of this column is carved a sorry-looking face, not unlike the death’s-heads on the tombstones of a country church-yard. Over it is written this inscription:— “EL VERDADERO RETRATO DE LA SANTA CARA DEL DIOS DE
XAEN,” — The true portrait of the holy countenance of the God of Xaen! I was so much struck with this strange superscription that I stopped to copy it.
“Do you really believe that this is what it pretends to be?” said I to a muleteer, who was watching my movements.
“I don’t know,” replied he, shrugging his brawny shoulders; “they say it is.”
“Who says it is?”
“The priest, — the Padre Cura.”
“I supposed so. And how was this portrait taken?”
He could not tell. The Padre Cura knew all about it.
When I joined my companions, who were a little in advance of me with the carriage, I got the mystery explained. The Catholic church boasts of three portraits of our Saviour, miraculously preserved upon the folds of a handkerchief, with which St. Veronica wiped the sweat from his brow, on the day of the crucifixion. One of these is at Toledo, another in the kingdom of Xaen, and the third at Rome.
THE impression which this monument of superstition made upon my mind was soon effaced by the magnificent scene which now burst upon me. The road winds up the mountain-side with gradual ascent; wild, shapeless, gigantic crags overhang it upon the right, and upon the left the wary foot starts back from the brink of a fearful chasm hundre
ds of feet in depth. Its sides are black with ragged pines, and rocks that have toppled down from above; and at the bottom, scarcely visible, wind the silvery waters of a little stream, a tributary of the Guadalquivir. The road skirts the ravine for miles, — now climbing the barren rock, and now sliding gently downward into shadowy hollows, and crossing some rustic bridge thrown over a wild mountain-brook.
At length the scene changed. We stood upon the southern slope of the Sierra, and looked down upon the broad, luxuriant valleys of Andalusia, bathed in the gorgeous splendor of a southern sunset. The landscape had already assumed the “burnished livery” of autumn; but the air I breathed was the soft and balmy breath of spring, — the eternal spring of Andalusia.
If ever you should be fortunate enough to visit this part of Spain, stop for the night at the village of La Carolina. It is indeed a model for all villages, — with its broad streets, its neat, white houses, its spacious market-place surrounded with a colonnade, and its public walk ornamented with fountains and set out with luxuriant trees. I doubt whether all Spain can show a village more beautiful than this.
THE approach to Cordova from the east is enchanting. The sun was just rising as we crossed the Guadalquivir and drew near to the city; and, alighting from the carriage, I pursued my way on foot, the better to enjoy the scene and the pure morning air. The dew still glistened on every leaf and spray; for the burning sun had not yet climbed the tall hedge-row of wild fig-tree and aloes which skirts the roadside. The highway wound along through gardens, orchards, and vineyards, and here and there above me towered the glorious palm in all its leafy magnificence. On my right, a swelling mountain-ridge, covered with verdure and sprinkled with little white hermitages, looked forth towards the rising sun; and on the left, in a long, graceful curve, swept the bright waters of the Guadalquivir, pursuing their silent journey through a verdant reach of soft lowland landscape. There, amid all the luxuriance of this sunny clime, arises the ancient city of Cordova, though stripped, alas Î of its former magnificence. All that reminds you of the past is the crumbling wall of the city, and a Saracen mosque, now changed to a Christian cathedral. The stranger, who is familiar with the history of the Moorish dominion in Spain, pauses with a sigh, and asks himself, Is this the imperial city of Alhakam the Just, and Abdoulrahman the Magnificent?
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 198
